556. Wild Child (2008)

Starring: Emma Roberts, Aidan Quinn, Natasha Richardson

Director: Nick Moore

Running Time: 96 mins

Wild Child is an American film about a Californian teenage girl who is forced to join a girls’ boarding school in the North of England, where she discovers the value of real friends and enjoying life outside of a social hierarchy as in America.

Basically, this is just Mean Girls with racism. Not necessarily racism, but it’s a look at British education from an American perspective, so there’s a lot of poking fun at our private school system, along with the story of a girl joining a school and finding friends.

Don’t get me wrong, this is better than Mean Girls, however not by much. The only improvements are the fact that Emma Roberts is a million times more funny and less irritating to watch than Lindsay Lohan, and that it doesn’t go too far with the obsession with the ‘cliques’, and rather focusses on a group of true friends.

But on the whole, the structure is pretty much identical to Mean Girls, with its only differences being stolen from the 2007 adaptation of St. Trinian’s, so if you’ve seen either of those films, don’t expect to get anything extra out of this.

And definitely don’t expect a barrel of laughs in this film either. An interesting thing about the comedy in this film is that it’s not particularly adult/teenagery, however it’s at times far too explicit and sweary for any young girls to watch, who seem like the target audience, but I would have to say that no matter how it is, it’s never very funny.

Your enjoyment of this film will also depend on who you are. Boys will struggle as usual, while girls below 12 will probably enjoy, however your nationality will also make a difference. Due to the amount of American humour overloaded into a British context, as a Brit, I really didn’t like this, and wasn’t particularly entertained by this, but I’m sure Americans would enjoy this a whole lot more.

Overall, then, I’ll give this a 4.9, because it was a largely unfunny, annoying, unoriginal and overly American for its context.